Page 94 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

ory that ware of this nature found in the countries
influenced by Arab civilisation is to be attributed to

Siam, it has little if anything to support it. The

dense stone-ware, with its full coloured enamel, pro-
duced in Siam during the past two or three centuries,

is well known to connoisseurs, and there is no evi-

dence that the keramic art of the country flourished

notably in other directions at earlier periods. Recent
researches, conducted by Sir Ernest Satow, C.M.G.,

then British Representative in Bangkok, at the request
of the writer, do indeed go to show that celadon was

among the ancient products of Siam. The great

scarcity of old specimens in the market interfered
with Mr. Satow's attempts, but in December, 1885,

when on a tour in northern Siam, he visited a ruined
city called Sawauk-halok. More than five centuries ago

a keramic manufactory existed in this city. Chinese

workmen were employed there and possibly Chinese
materials were sometimes used. Nothing now sur-
vives of the town but the fragmentary walls of Buddhist

temples and the remains of the kiln. In the vicinity
of the latter pieces of pottery are dug up from time

to time. Mr. Satow secured three of them. They
are evidently failures in baking, which were rejected

as useless, and their condition alone, apart from other
evidence, furnishes an almost conclusive argument
against the probability of their having been imported
from China in recent times and carried 400 miles to
a ruined city never visited by any Western previously

to Mr. Satow's tour. Among these three fragments
was the body of a vase, now in the possession of the

writer. Its pate is coarse, reddish grey stone-ware,

essentially different from the characteristic clay of
Chinese celadon. But the glaze might easily be mis-

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